Telepathy and Dreams

Experimental
Medicine and Surgery: Drugs and Dreams - Transactions of the fourth symposium
of The Carl Neuberg Society for International Scientific Relations, March 29
and 30, 1967. Vo1.27, 19-38, 1969, No.
1-2. Brooklyn Medical Press Inc. New
York

It is
of some interest to note that within the past year two psychiatric journals (1,
2) have devoted entire issues to the subject of ESP. The controversy over the
integrity and relevance of parapsychology as a legitimate area of scientific
concern has been with us ever since the early proponents of the field began
organizing and presenting their data in the form of what they hoped would be
proper credentials; namely, statistical reliability. What then accounts for the
current resurgence of interest and for the sudden transformation of background
noise generally regarded as interfering with the flow of scientific information
into sharply focused, challenging and, on occasion, roughly debated issues?

There
have been periodic onslaughts mounted for the purpose of wresting from the
Scientific Establishment a degree of recognition, a sense of identity, and the
collaborative efforts necessary to integrate the new findings into the
scientific world view. In the 1880's, with the founding of the Society for
Psychical Research in England, reliance was placed on the collection of an
impressive number of carefully documented, well-attested-to accounts of
spontaneously occurring telepathic and clairvoyant events. Despite the
painstaking efforts at establishing evidentiality, this attempt failed, as
anecdotal accounts proved to be too fragile a support for propositions as
challenging as those under consideration.

A
regrouping of forces took place under Rhine, based upon a laboratory approach
and the application of statistical methods. Over the years other laboratories
became involved, both in this country and abroad, and a considerable number of
well-controlled experiments were reported, in some of which staggering odds
against chance were found.

Two
critical reviews (3,4) of the best data put forth by parapsychologists both
prefer the hypotheses of fraud or self-deception rather than to credit the data
with any innovating or even inexplicable implications. The fact that the
possibility of fraud has emerged as the single most cogent reason for refusing
scientific credibility is in itself an acknowledgment of the difficulty in
refuting the data on their own terms. Criticism has centered upon the relevance
of statistical techniques; the techniques themselves, particularly the criteria
of randomness; the absence to data of a single absolutely fraud-proof
experiment, and the failure to produce a replicable experiment. All of these arguments,
with the possible exception of the replicable experiment, have been refuted by
parapsychologists, to the extent that they are refutable. The hypothesis of
fraud will have to be subject to a twofold refutation - the weight of even
stronger evidence that parapsychologists will be called upon to produce and the
plausibility of considering the existence of collusion, dishonesty and
self-deceit on a scale of enormous proportions among men with proper scientific
credentials by way of training and experience.

In the
1940's, a minor skirmish was fought on clinical grounds when psychiatric
writers attempted to focus on the occurrence of telepathic elements in the
dreams of patients undergoing therapy (5). At the time, this produced little
more than a ripple of interest, subject as it was to many of the same
limitations as the anecdotal data. These contributions did add, however, a
unique dimension to our understanding - a point that will be later considered
in greater detail.

What is
the situation today? The critics, by virtue of number, power and the inherent
and understandable conservatism of science, have been successful in denying
scientific respectability to parapsychology. Those of us working in the field
can take some solace in the fact that they are a bit more hard pressed. There
are a number of reasons for this. More and more, current activity in
parapsychology is taking place within academic settings and subject to academic
standards. Secondly, the research is moving away from a reliance on demonstration
by statistical methods alone and is moving toward the utilization of recognized
physiological and psychological tools; i.e., the use of shielded cages by
Russian investigators testing hypnotic effects at a distance (6), the noting of
extrasensory correspondences through plethysmographic recordings (7), and the
use of the electroencephalograph to monitor dreams in an ESP experiment (8). As
a third point it may be noted that a number of distinguished men of science
have declared themselves either in favor of accepting the evidence or at least
of taking it seriously. Admittedly, the issue can not be decided on the basis
of personal testimony, no matter how high the source. In this case, however,
the important thing is not the testimony itself but the fact that these men
have been able to offer, based on mastery of their own fields, seminal ideas
concerning possible mechanisms and models. A few such allies, working from
within the Scientific Establishment, may be mentioned. Perhaps the most
insistent and dedicated spokesman for humility and openness in grappling with
parapsychological data is Gardner Murphy.
In his own view, "The systems of relationships known as science are far
from complete, and . . . there are many things which are patently
'impossible' from existing standpoints, which become reconceptualized and
assimilated into science as time goes on" (9). Murphy himself has been instrumental in teasing out of the
cumulative data ways. in which they do correspond with certain existing
psychological laws and principles; e.g., the law of positive motivation, the
law of perceptual structure (referring here to such findings as salience and
decline effects) and the principle of dissociation.

Speaking
from the vantage point of modern physics, Pascual
Jordan (10) draws an analogy between the physical concept of
complementarity and the psychological concept of repression. In both instances,
one aspect of an event comes to the fore at the expense of another. Jordan
believes this to be of importance because of the way in which the empirical
facts of parapsychology are linked with those of the psychology of the
unconscious. He also feels that any attempt at explanation within a
three-dimensional framework of reality is doomed to fail and that more complex
conceptual models will have to evolve.

In an
essay dealing with mind as physical reality the biologist, J. B. S. Haldane (11), suggests the
possibility that phenomena such as telepathy may have a factual basis in
quantal events that are shared by several brains.

The
neurophysiological model of mind and brain developed by Sir John Eccles can, in his opinion,
assimilate the data of parapsychological research (12). He considers that if
psi[1]
capacities exist they provide evidence of slight and irregular effects capable
of influencing unstable neuronal states in a way that would be analogous to the
operation of will or other psychic states upon the nervous system.

Going
back a bit farther, to 19-10, it is of historical interest to note that Dr. Hans Berger, who first succeeded in
recording the electrical activity of the brain, reported on successful
experiments in telepathic transmission which he conducted (13). He drew an
analogy to radio telephony and thought that transmission could occur when two
brains were suitably attuned.

The
dean of American neurologists, C. Judson
Herrick, likewise identified the unknowns involved in psi phenomena
as no different in principle "from those presented by every mental and
intentionally controlled act of whatever sort . . . The way to learn
the true facts about psi phenomena is to explore them by carefully controlled
observation and experiment, with every safeguard against error, delusion, and
fraud that ingenuity can devise and with a mind receptive to the possibility
that the explanations sought may be found only after revision of current
physicalistic theory of space, time, and causality" (14).

Freud, while never explicitly committing himself to
a belief in the reality of telepathy, did on a number of occasions (15)
seriously consider the telepathy hypothesis as an explanation for certain
dynamic correspondences observed by him and called to his attention. He further
implicated the role of unconscious factors and distortion as these might
influence a telepathic exchange. Freud's attitude is a consummate example of
openness, courage and caution in charting a course for himself between the
hostile skepticism of his colleagues and his refusal to disavow the reality of
his own observations and experiences. It is of interest to compare his attitude
toward matters of this kind with that of the two other founding fathers of the
psychoanalytic movement. Jung
displayed an uncritical acceptance as part of his general immersion in mystical
speculations (16). Adler (17)
eschewed everything connected with it as either quackery or self-delusion.

It
might be well to conclude this sample array of distinguished protagonists with
the words of a philosopher of science addressing an audience of
parapsychologists:

"Tolerate
the strident critical voices of hard-boiled, pragmatic and satisfied scientists
without too much concern, and continue your own painstaking search for an
understanding of new kinds of experiences, possible in terms of concepts which
now appear strange (18)."

The
strident voices of the critics have identified problematic areas that are of
equal concern to parapsychologists themselves. These are essentially four:

1. Although not all parapsychologists agree on
the issue of replicability, the fact is that were a replicable experiment to
appear, capable of being carried out by a variety of investigators, the major
obstacle in the path of acceptance would have been cleared away;

2. Perhaps as a corollary to the replicability
problem there is considerable difficulty in identifying and thereby controlling
the many variables influencing success or failure;

3. Psi events appear to be so elusive, so
unpredictable in their appearance, so essentially capricious, that alternate
hypotheses will always appear more reasonable; and,

4. The absence of models and theories of any
heuristic significance or of any conceptual value in bridging the discontinuity
between psi phenomena and the ordinary subject matter of science.

It is
with these problem areas in mind, particularly the first three, that the
experiments to be described were undertaken. Our immediate concern was the
dreaming state as a possible conveyor of telepathic events. One of the earliest
investigators to call attention to the facilitary influence of altered states
of consciousness was F. W. H. Myers
(19), whose work remains a classic in the field. He spoke of sensory and motor
automatisms by which he meant events emerging from a subliminal level of
awareness and intruding into ordinary life, assuming either a sensory form such
as an inner vision or inner audition, or a motor form. Myers gives many examples of what he
termed veridical hallucinations and includes elaborate documentation of the
facts presented. It was Freud who
embellished this simple model with speculations concerning the dynamic import
of telepathic communications, their relevance to current conflicts, and the
way- in which unconscious processing left its imprint on the manifest character
of the telepathic message. Surprisingly enough, or perhaps not, these early
speculations of Freud were picked
up by only a few of his followers until the 1940's when a host of psychiatric
contributions appeared. These spelled out, as well as it was possible to do
within the limitations of the clinical situation, the internal and external psychological
factors conducive to the occurrence of psi effects. Most of the effects noted
came through in the dreams of patients and did so under conditions which
highlighted immediate problematic aspects of the patient-doctor relationship.
Certain criteria emerged which proved useful in identifying a dream as
presumptively telepathic. These may be outlined as follows:

1. The corresponding elements between dream and
reality should be:

a) Unusual: i.e., not ordinarily occurring in dreams or in the dreams
of the particular patient.

b) Non-inferential; i.e., elements the patient could not
ordinarily infer from his knowledge of the therapist or his experience with
him.

c) Intrusive. This is included not as an absolute criterion but rather
because when it does occur it is generally a reliable indicator of a paranormal
event. It refers to the quality of standing apart and appearing as strange,
unfamiliar or intrusive to the dreamer.

2. The relationship between the events in the
therapist's life and the telepathic mirroring in the patient's dream should
occur in close temporal relationship. This generally refers to a period within
24 hours although occasionally striking correspondences may be noted at longer
intervals.

3. The criterion of psychological meaning. Can
the correspondences be understood as a unique strategy of defense employed by
patients under conditions where the knowledge gained in this way is utilized in
the service of both establishing and defending against contact with the
therapist?

The
circumstances under which telepathic events appear in dreams have been
variously described. Almost all writers emphasize the role of transferential
and counter-transferential factors. As a result of either irrational needs on
the part of the patients or the sensing of some negative quality in the
therapist, the patient may succeed through the telepathic maneuver in exposing
and needling a particularly vulnerable area in the therapist. Servadio (20) has emphasized the feeling
in the patient of frustration and blockage of communication. He sees sleep as
favoring telepathic transmission by virtue of its regressive release of archaic
bridging mechanisms. Eisenbud
(21) was among the first to demonstrate the therapeutic usefulness of actively
working with the telepathy hypothesis. Ehrenwald
(22, 23) wrote extensively both on the criteria as well as on the possible role
of paranormal factors in the major psychoses. Ullman
(24) noted some of the characterologic and communication difficulties of the
consistent telepathic dreamers.

Telepathic
rapport seems to occur in the clinical setting under conditions in which there
is a temporary loss of effective symbolic contact between therapist and patient
at times when the patient considers such contact to be vital. Anxiety or other
deflecting negative emotions in the therapist act as predisposing influences.
By means of the telepathic maneuver the patient does succeed in exposing the
counter-transferential block and releases a contradictory message to the
therapist. He makes his own awareness of the therapist's secret known to the
therapist and at the same time remains in a position to disclaim any
responsibility for so doing. The inhibited, obsessively-organized individual
who tends to use language in the service of distance mechanisms rather than to
facilitate contact is most likely to fall back on this maneuver. Telepathic
contact appears as one way of establishing contact at critical points in the
management of the contradictory needs for distance and inviolability and, on
the other hand, the inextinguishable needs for closeness and contact.

With
this background we can now be more explicit concerning the choice of the
dreaming state for the design of an ESP experiment. As might be surmised, this
in part derives from the apparent frequency and importance of dreaming and
other altered states of consciousness in the anecdotal and case history
literature. The clinical setting implicates the dream as the state most
frequently associated with the telepathic message. There are aspects of dreams
and dreaming that suggest possible reasons for this connection. Motivational
systems closer to the core of the individual come into operation in the dream.
The spontaneous occurrence of telepathy in crisis situations suggests that in
some way the mobilization of vital needs is implicated. Dreaming as a state of
heightened activation suggests that a vigilance function is operative, oriented
(in the human at any rate) more to the detection of threats to the symbolic
system linking the individual to his social milieu rather than of threats
involving his state of bodily intactness. We have, in the dreaming state, the
possible advantages of an altered state of consciousness combined with a state
of high arousal and one in which basic motivational systems are activated.

There
are additional reasons for choosing the dreaming state. Were a psi effect to be
detectable under these circumstances the problem of replicability should be
relatively easy, dreaming being an universal phenomenon. With the advent of
current physiological techniques for the monitoring of dreaming it became
possible to design a laboratory approach to the study of possible extra-sensory
effects occurring in dreams. No longer dependent upon spontaneous recall
occurring in the morning, we could now work with a near total yield of dream
recall and compare the account so obtained with whatever had been selected as
the telepathic stimulus or target. The essential feature of the design was. of
course, the steps taken to insure that no knowledge of the target could reach
the subject by any ordinary channels of communication. A Dream Laboratory was
established at Maimonides Medical Center early in 1963 and a series of
systematic studies were undertaken to test the hypothesis that telepathic
transfer of information from agent to subject could be experimentally
demonstrated in the dreaming state. Four studies have been completed and will
be briefly summarized.

Experimental Study 1

The
method and procedure used in the first two studies have been reported elsewhere
in detail (25, 26, 27). The specific hypothesis under consideration stated that
a subject's (S's) dream protocol for any given experimental night would reflect
the influence of telepathy by the appearance in the S's dream of correspondences
to the target material viewed by the agent. Twelve 5" by 8" prints of
famous paintings were selected as experimental targets. On a given night one of
these was randomly selected and opened by an agent in a room at a distance from
the subject. The latter remained in the sleep room throughout the night. His
sleep and REM pattern was monitored by an 8-channel Medcraft Model D EEG in the
adjacent control room. All verbal communication between the S and the
experimenter (E) was mediated through an intercom system and recorded on tape.
Twelve different subjects were used in the first study, each sleeping one night
in the laboratory. In the morning, associative data from the S was added to the
record of the dream reports. At a later point, the transcripts made from the
tapes were sent to three independent outside judges who had not been connected
with the experimental procedure in any way. The judges also received the twelve
potential target pictures and were asked to rank the targets in order of their
closeness to each individual dream protocol, first for the dream material alone
and then for the dream plus the associative data. The judges were also asked to
express a confidence rating for each rank. The subjects judged his own dreams
against the targets in a similar way.

The
means of the judges' ranks and ratings were entered on twelve-by-twelve tables
and subjected to a two-way analysis of variance (for targets and nights)
according to the Scheffé method. The rankings made by the S's were handled
similarly. The rankings were also evaluated by binomial expansion. with hits
including ranks of #11 through #6 and misses including ranks from #7 to #12.
The ranking of the subject was significant at the 0.05 level when evaluated by
the binomial expansion method. Neither the ranks nor the ratings of the judges
were statistically significant; however, on six of the nights where subjects
worked with the male agent their ranks received significantly higher ratings
than those of subjects working with the female agent (F=6.47 ; P > 0.05).

Example 1

The
randomly selected target. Animals,
by Tamayo is shown in Fig. 1. The painting depicts two dogs with flashing teeth
eating pieces of meat. A huge black rock can be seen in the background.

The
points of correspondence between dream and target picture are noted in the
following excerpts from S's second dream report: ". . . the name
of the dream was 'Black Wood, Vermont' or something like that . . .
Well, there's this group of people, and they have an idea that they're picked out
for something special . . . and that these other people were
threatening enemies . . .

Excerpts
from S's third dream report: "I was at this banquet ... and 1 was eating
something like rib steak. And this friend of mine was there . . . and
people were talking about how she wasn't very good to invite for dinner because
she was very conscious of other people getting more to eat than she got - like,
especially, meat - because in Israel they don't have so much meat
. . . That was the most important part of the dream, that dinner
. . . It was probably Freudian like all my other dreams - you know,
eating, and all that stuff, and a banquet . . . Well. there was
another friend of mine, also in this dream. Somebody that I teach with, and she
was eyeing everybody to make sure that everybody wasn't getting more than she
was too. And I was chewing a piece of . . . rib steak. And I was
sitting at the table, and other people were talking about this girl from
Israel, and they were saying that she's not very nice to invite to eat because
she's greedy, or something that."

Excerpts
from S's associations: "It was about a banquet and we were eating meat,
and people were telling me that this Israeli friend of mine was not nice to
invite to a banquet because she was always afraid she wasn't getting enough
. . . I was invited because I'm polite and not demanding, but I just
tried to keep my mouth shut in the dream. I tried not to say anything about
her, even though in a way I was glad that she was finally being found out ...
And the second one . . . was about Vermont, Black Rock, Vermont
. . . Yesterday, I was at the beach, and I was sitting on one of the
rocks . . . and I felt like that mermaid from Black Rock . . ."

Experimental Study II

The
best of the twelve subjects in Study #1 and the better of the two agents were
paired in a seven night study similar in design to the first one. A total of
twelve nights had been planned but the subject became ill on the eighth night
and had to discontinue. The subject's ranks for dreams and associations were
significant at the 0.05 level (F = 4.41) and his ratings were
significant at the 0.01 level (F = 8.19). Three judges ranked
transcripts of each night's dreams and associative material against all seven
potential targets. The ranks were significant at the 0.001 level
(F = 18.14) and the confidence ratings given to these ranks were
significant at the 0.01 level (F = 10.86). The ranking and rating
were also significant based on the dream material alone (F = 8.30;
P < 0.01; F = 5.50; P < 0.05,
respectively).

Example 2.

The
randomly selected target The Sacrament of
the Last Supper by Dali is shown in Fig. 2. It portrays Christ at
the center of a table surrounded by his twelve disciples. A glass of wine and a
loaf of bread are on the table while a body of water and a fishing boat can be
seen in the distance.

Excerpts
from S's first dream report: "There was one scene of an ocean
. . . It had a strange beauty about it and a strange formation."

Excerpts
from S's second dream report: "I haven't any reason to say this but
somehow boats come to mind. Fishing boats. Small size fishing boats
. . . There was a picture in the Sea Fare Restaurant that came to
mind as I was describing it. It's a very large painting. Enormous. It shows,
oh, I'd say about a dozen or so men pulling a fishing boat ashore right after
having returned from a catch."

Excerpts
from S's third dream report: "I was looking at a catalog . . .
it was a Christmas catalog. Christmas season."

Excerpts
from S's fourth dream report: "I had some sort of a brief dream about an
M.D. . . . I was talking to someone and . . . the
discussion had to do with why . . . a doctor becomes a doctor because
he's supposed to be an M.D., or something of that nature."

Excerpts
from S's fifth dream report: It had to do with doctors again . . .
The picture . . . that I'm thinking of now is the doctor sitting
beside a child that is ill . . . It's one of those classical ones
. . . It's called "The
Physician."

Excerpts
from S's sixth dream report: "I was in this office - a doctor's office
again . . . We were talking about Preston . . . He's a
psychiatrist. A supervisor I had. Before he became a psychiatrist he was a
pathologist."

Excerpts
from S's seventh dream report: "The only part that comes to mind is the part
where I'm in a kitchen and there is a restaurant that I was planning to go
to."

Excerpts
from S's eighth dream report: "I was sampling these different articles
that looked like spices. Herbs. Grocery store. Place to eat. Food of different
types."

Excerpts
from S's associations: "... The fisherman dream makes me think of the
Mediterranean area, perhaps even some sort of Biblical time. Right now my
associations are of the fish and the loaf, or even of feeding of the multitudes
. . . Once again I think of Christmas . . . Having to do with
the ocean - water, fishermen, something in this area . . ."

Experimental Studies III and IV

The two
studies have been recently completed but not yet published. The third study was
another screening device involving twelve subjects and two agents. Certain
improvements were made in the design of the experiment and in the new Dream
Laboratory (Fig. 3) where this and the subsequent study were carried out.

The
room in which the agent remained was located at a distance of 96 feet from the
sleep room. The target selection was made by someone not involved in the
experiment so that the experimenter had no knowledge of the range of targets
from which the target for the night would be chosen. The experimenter would not
know what target would be used on a given night.

In the
fourth study, the best of the twelve subjects and the agent who worked with her
in the screening study were paired in an eight-night series. Neither the third
nor the fourth study produced statistically significant results. There were,
however, a number of interesting correspondences evident upon inspection of
dream protocols and targets selected on a given night. Two examples are given,
one from each study.

Example 3.

The
target selected and shown in Fig. 4 was Dempsey
and Firpo by Bellows. This target portrays two boxers and a referee
in a rectangular boxing ring. One of the boxers has been knocked through the
ropes into the audience.

Excerpts
from subject's first dream report: "... something about posts . . .
Just posts standing up from the ground, and nothing else ... There's some kind
of a feeling of moving . . . Ah, something about Madison Square
Garden and a boxing fight. An angular shape, as if all these things that I see
were in a rectangular framework. There's an angular shape coming down toward
the right, the lower right, as if you were seeing a filming that took up a
whole block . . . That angular right hand corner of the picture is
connected with Madison Square boxing fight . . . I had to go to Madison
Square Garden to pick up tickets to a boxing fight, and there were a lot of
tough punks - people connected with the fight - around the place and I had a
hard time finding the people who were supposed to have the tickets for me, and
a guard was in front of the gate to the office where these people were and I
had to talk with this guard. I could have had an argument with him. but instead
we got along and talked about it, and finally he let me through the gate into
the inner office and I finally got the tickets."

Excerpts
from subject's second dream report: "The machine is a strange shape. It's
got two squares and stands about as high as a man and it's got two squares, as
if cube forms connected by a vertical shaft . . . I can't associate
that shape with anything I know. It's strange, too. I'm unclear if there are
two or three figures in the dream because there seems to be the presence of
other people . . . These people seem to have met in a social
situation but they were there for some other purpose anyway, and they came
together, but when they came together it was apparently the only reason that
they came together. Now it seems to be clearer. There's another figure. It
seems more clear that there's one older figure of an old man and two younger
ones that I can remember, and there certainly is an awareness of a third
person."

Excerpts
from subject's third dream report: "A hexagonal cube appeared. It's a cube
with a number of sides. I don't know exactly how many, but something like six
or eight . . ."

Excerpts
from subject's associational material: "Well, the thing that came to my
mind was as if this picture took place in a square frame . . . I went
to Madison Square Garden with some money to pick up tickets which had been
ordered by someone in the office, and again there was this huge building - this
was just the association to Madison Square Building or Garden - there was this
huge building and there were all these wrestling and boxing posters around, and
a bunch of kookie-looking people - most of them sort of looked like they could
have been wrestlers, or old fighters or something - in line wanting to get
tickets to these events, and I went upstairs and went to this thing called the
Boxing Club or something where you get tickets . . . I think if you
hadn't brought it up, I think I might have forgotten about that Madison Square
Garden

Example 4.

The
target selected (Fig. 5) was The Drinkers by Chagall. This painting portrays a
decapitated man with a white face, black-outlined eyes and black lips. He is
drinking from a bottle. His body (minus his head and neck) is clothed by a
black suit; he is holding a knife. On the table, a golden plate can be seen.

S's
first dream report: No apparent correspondence.

S's
second dream report: "I don't know whether it's related to the dream that
I had about a beer. About Ballantine beer. The words are 'Why is Ballantine
beer like an opening night, a race that finishes neck and neck, or a ride on the
toboggan slide?' The commercial is running through my mind, and this song
. . . There's this big dinner party . . . A young woman had
apparently come to the city with somebody else who had come to this dinner
. . . and she was wearing what was supposed to be a cocktail dress,
and it was black, and the shape of it was mostly nondescript, but it was
studded with rhinestones . . . That table was really empty all the
time. All it had on it was plates, empty white plates . . ."

S's
third dream report: ". . . I had been in a restaurant next door,
eating . . . and in this restaurant there was a separate section that
was a bar, and in the dream I was at this place a number of different nights.
The dream seemed to have some sort of time dimension because there was a
bartender, a short fellow. There was another guy there, and the first night
they sent over a drink for me . . . This girl wanted them to go or
something . . . She had loads of makeup on, and lots of black eye
shadow and black eye pencil lining her eyes, and black eyebrows and her lips
were black too . . . And she wanted to know what I had done with my
hair because I had my hair in a pony tail and it was very short in front, and
she thought I'd cut it . . . That whole bar business and the
restaurant and the booth are like a place I was at in Massachusetts
. . . The most strange thing about the whole dream and all of its
complications is the transformation of Carol . . . to this garish,
very pasty, very thick makeup base, and this black lipstick and black eye
business and black eyebrow stuff. I associate that immediately to the black
dress with too many rhinestones on it in the other dream . . . The
black business seems to leave the realm of something that I can say is a
personal association . . ."

Post-sleep
interview with S: "Before I was falling asleep, there was something about
double-faced tape. In thinking about it, what I think of is not only the type
of tape you use to mount things, you know, the kind that's sticky on both
sides, but also what occurred to me is recording tape which is really
double-faced also . . . Then I remembered as I tried to go back to sleep
that Ballantine commercial song, and the whole commercial that I'd seen on TV
came to mind. I remember . . . particularly about the black and
white, the Negro and white, being integrated in the commercial ... I had left
out one part of it which now seems to me very important in view of the night's
dreaming. The end of the song is that 'There's more spirit to it'
. . . that's why the beer is supposed to be so great. And ... I
remembered thinking about a movie I had seen . . . a week and a half
ago, 'Juliet of the Spirits' . . . One of the characters who comes to
mind is . . . very kooky . . . she wears this wild black
outfit that's really very outlandish and heavy makeup . . . Then the
next dream was a very long and involved thing . .. And the most striking thing
about that was when Carol's makeup sort of changed . . . All of a
sudden she had this very pale, pasty, thick makeup on, and heavy black eyebrow
pencil and shadow and liner on her eyes in black, and even her lipstick was
black ... Color was in every dream. The most striking business, of course,
strangely enough, was black . . . And then the only other color that
sticks in my mind is . . . a kind of orangey-gold color
. . ."

Discussion

The
efforts to transpose an in vivo
type of experience into an in vitro
experiment has posed a number of problems and has thus far met with only
limited success. The statistically significant way in which targets and dream
protocols were matched in the early studies, particularly the second one, was
not found in the last two studies. Although the conditions and the design were
in general "tighter" and the current laboratory more suitable for the
purposes of control, it was not felt by those of us carrying out the research
that these factors were the important ones accounting for the difference. A
study utilizing the same subject and agent team as in Study II is now under way
in the hope that the earlier results can be replicated. The reasons for the
differences in results are to be sought in the many variables that are involved
in this experiment. Some of these may now be briefly considered.

Limitations of the In Vitro Experiment:

Under
spontaneous circumstances telepathic effects appear to occur when the emotional
weight of a crisis situation overcomes whatever barriers or difficulties there
may be blocking this form of information transfer. These are generally unique
and solitary events in the life of the individual. By way of contrast, there
apparently are individuals who profess to having more frequent experiences of
this kind. There are some among the latter group, known as sensitives, who
claim success in initiating experiences of this kind.

Neither
the crisis situation nor the gifted sensitive are easily brought into the
purview of the laboratory. The challenge of the experiment, the unique
experience of spending a night in the laboratory, were as close to establishing
a crisis effect as was apt to occur spontaneously. One of the purposes of the
initial twelve-subject study was screening in the hope of finding a gifted
subject. The subject selected from the first group of twelve did well; the one
from the second group of twelve did not. Neither reported any prior ESP
experiences in their lives. Aside from the fact that we were tapping
superficial motivational systems and utilizing artificially generated targets,
certain features of the spontaneous occurrence were captured in the design.
These included the effort to embed the telepathic exchange in an altered state
of consciousness and to link it to dreaming in the hope that any telepathic
effects getting through might be magnified in the process through a tie-in with
the motivational currents exposed during these recurrent states of internal
scanning.

In the
interest of establishing a simple and workable design, the subject-agent
relationship (which one might suspect to be rather crucial) was, in the
twelve-subject studies, structured along expediential rather than selective
lines, with a male and female agent assigned to each six subjects. Some
selectivity entered into the single subject studies. It is obvious, however,
that there remains much to be explored by varying the relationship between
subject and agent along lines of genetic closeness; intimacy, etc. We are at
the same time seeking ways of involving the agent in more effective and more
authentic responses to the target.

Limitations of the Judging Process:

In
seeking to establish the independent assessment of correspondences through the
use of outside judges certain intangibles enter into the picture. Although they
are difficult to assess. they probably do not favor the results. The task of
matching seven to twelve target, pictures against a dream protocol and
repeating this seven to twelve times, is a tedious and oftentimes boring task.
There are also differences is psychological sophistication among the judges.
Inasmuch as correspondences were at times more symbolic than manifest and that
some judges were more attuned to this than others, less than optimal results
might stem from this source. Other difficulties were incidental to the fact
that, despite certain precautions. some elements in the protocols were shared
by more than one picture, leading to a wrong choice which might otherwise have
been avoided. When there are many dreams in a night and when the protocols are
very lengthy, good correspondences appearing in one or two dreams may be
overshadowed by the sheer quantity of material to which the judge has to
address himself. Slight or suggestive correspondences appearing in several
dreams may assume salience by weight of number and amount over a more relevant
and pointed correspondence appearing only once.

Summary

The
anecdotal and clinical background attesting to the relationship between
telepathy and dreaming initiated a series of systematic experiments based on
the techniques now available to monitor dreams. The studies reviewed briefly
represent one such attempt and, while the overall results are lacking in the
kind of "coercive factuality" (28) needed to offset doubt based on
the feeling of antecedent improbability that most men of science have
concerning data of this kind, they nevertheless are not without interest and
certainly warrant further investigation. It is in the nature of dreaming to
combine states of high activation and dissociation and it is precisely this
combination which empirically seems to facilitate telepathic transfer. That
this is the case was apparently borne out by one of the studies. That the
dreaming state alone is not sufficient is also obvious. Further studies will be
directed at defining the way in which the structure and character of the
subject-agent interaction and other variables influence the result.